52 definitions
The book's index
Existentialism Is a Humanism
43 concepts · 52 definitions
- abandonment1
- action1
- angel1
- caprice1
- circumstance1
- cogito1
- commitment1
- comrade1
- coward1
- cult of humanity1
- despair1
- essence1
- ethics1
- excuse1
- existentialism2
- existentialist ethics2
- fascism1
- freedom1
- God1
- good2
- good faith1
- hope1
- human nature1
- humanism1
- intersubjectivity1
- lie1
- love2
- man5
- morality1
- other2
- passion1
- permission1
- pessimism1
- purpose1
- reality1
- responsibility1
- revolution1
- self1
- sincerity1
- subjectivity1
- surpassing1
- transcendence1
- understanding1
Man (n.) is all the time outside himself: it is by projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man exist.
Man (n.) is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose one.
Man (n.) must, without any support or help whatever, invent man at every instant.
Man (n.) first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.
Love (n.) does not exist apart from the deeds of love; there is no potential love other than that manifested in loving.
Love (n.) for a friend is worth such-and-such a sum only once I have actually paid it.
Other (n.) is indispensable to my existence: I cannot be spiritual, wicked or jealous unless others recognise me as such.
Other (n.) is revealed in the very act of discovering myself, as a freedom that confronts mine and cannot think or will without doing so for or against me.
Existentialism (n.) as humanism reminds man that there is no legislator but himself, and that he becomes truly human not by turning back on himself but by seeking an aim beyond himself.
Existentialism (n.) is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position.
Existentialist ethics (n.) has one answer for whoever asks what to do: you are free, therefore choose, that is, invent, for no general rule of morality can show the way.
Existentialist ethics (n.) works like painting: no one asks what picture an artist ought to paint, and nothing that should be done can be settled in advance, since both are invention.
An Angel (n.) gives an order only if I decide it is an angel — even the voice from heaven needs me to vouch for it.
A Coward (n.) is defined by the deed he has done — and what horrifies people is that he is guilty of being a coward.
The Cult of humanity (n.) ends in a humanism shut in upon itself — and in Fascism.
Fascism (n.) will be the truth of man if men decide tomorrow to establish it and the others are too cowardly to stop them, and so much the worse for us.